Tour de France 2012

Hail and Farewell, George Hincapie

After three decades of reporting from the Tour de France, Samuel Abt offers a historical perspective of the world's greatest bicycle race—from his living room

samuel abt

(Photo by Courtesy of BMC Racing Team)

Everybody else has praised George Hincapie as a rider and a man since he announced in June that he will retire this year, and now it’s my turn.

I second the motion. He is a swell person—friendly and decent, self-effacing yet proud just enough—and, of course, a strong rider who helped three others win the Tour de France. He never won the big Classic he dreamed about, Paris-Roubaix, where he was in the top 10 seven times, but did finish first in Ghent-Wevelgem in 2001 and in Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne in 2005. In the Tour de France, he helped win three team time trials and won a mountain stage at Pla d’Adet in 2005. His great accomplishment is his durability: He turned 39 on June 29 and the next day set the record for Tour starts at 17.

Let me begin by remembering a Tour he didn’t start. That was in 1995, when Hincapie was barely 23 and in his third year as a professional.

His season had begun well: first in the minor Dutch race 8 of Chaam, third in the Thrift Drug Classic, 10th in the USPRO Championship, 11th in Kuurne, 21st in Paris-Roubaix, 27th in Het Volk. In an interview, he said that he hoped, perhaps even expected, to be selected for Motorola’s Tour de France team. That didn’t happen. Team officials decided he was too young for the three-week grind.

When the race pulled out of St. Brieuc, France, Hincapie was sitting on the curb in his full Motorola uniform, watching the line of riders disappear. He was crying quietly when I sat down beside him and tried to offer comfort. “I should be there,” he said. “I wanted it so much.”

I put an arm around him. “Next year,” I said. “There’ll be plenty of Tours de France for you. You’re young, there will be plenty of Tours for you.”

Got that right, didn’t I? A record 17 starts and presumably 16 finishes. I considered writing about his dejection for my newspaper and decided against it, feeling it was too private a moment then. Now it’s simply another anecdote in a long career.

In 1997, I tried to comfort Hincapie again, this time in Philadelphia.

We were sitting in a U.S. Postal Service team car after the USPRO Championship and a bouquet of spring flowers that he received for being the first American over the line sat with us. Hincapie was U.S. champion for 80 minutes only.

After he mounted the podium and received his bouquet and stars-and-stripes jersey, after he announced that his parents had come from New York to see him race, after he attended a news conference and said, “I’ve looked at so many riders in Europe wearing national champions’ jerseys and thought, ‘I want to be that’”—after all that, he was told that he had been stripped of his title because he spent too long being paced by a team car following a flat.

Officials ruled that he had spent more than two minutes behind the car with less than 10 miles to go in the 156-mile race. To no avail, Postal Service officials argued that Hincapie had been motorpaced for 15 or 20 seconds. While he sat in the team car afterward, Hincapie was shattered. “They can’t do this, they can’t do this,” he said over and over again.

What could I say in consolation? I tried the same words I used in St. Brieuc: There are many more championships ahead of you, many more chances to win that jersey.

He brushed the words away and covered his eyes with his hands. “This was the year,” he said. “They can’t do this.” But they could and did.

Another happy ending: The next year Hincapie was the first American across the line and finally got a stars-and-stripes jersey to keep and wear in European races. He looked stunning.

To close with a Tour de France moment that sums him up, let’s recall the 2006 race. In the prologue, Hincapie finished second to Thor Hushovd by less than a second. The next day he finished third in a bonus sprint, gained two seconds and took the yellow jersey.

“I wasn’t thinking beforehand about the bonus sprint,” he admitted. “I was thinking about the disappointment of yesterday. I wanted so much to win the prologue and the yellow jersey. So today, once I saw the opportunity, I had to take it.”

Would his Discovery Channel team defend his jersey? “I’d love to keep the jersey as long as possible,” he said. “It’s up to Johan.”

He meant Johan Bruyneel, his directeur sportif, who decided not to expend team energy in fighting for the race lead. On the second stage, Hushovd finished third in a bonus sprint, gaining two seconds and the jersey.

That one day started and ended Hincapie’s time in yellow during 17 Tours. I asked him if he was disappointed. “No,” he replied. “The team always comes first.”

There was no point this time in saying that there would be other Tours, other chances for the yellow jersey. We both felt that there wouldn’t be.